


Multitudes

by Missy



Category: Midsommar (2019)
Genre: Clingy Behavior, Codependency, F/M, Future Fic, Ghosts of the Past - Freeform, Post-Canon, Romance, Snow, Unsettling, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-16 07:29:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21032507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: Time passes.





	Multitudes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plastics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastics/gifts).

Winters in Harga are blinding.

Pure, white and sweet, and chilling to the bone. Dani spends them waddling through the snow in her thick fur coat, going from house to house with steaming pots of thick soup and homebrewed liquor, chatting with the other women.

She's glad to have freedom of motion. Pelle had made her snowshoes as a courtship gift, and as March passes close to April they’ve begun to wear thin. She is not on them often. They spend most of their time alone, reverently locked together, needing nothing else of the world around them.

And all the while, outside the window and as the fire beside them roars, the snow has fallen. Erasing Harga’s sins, allowing the village at large to pretend still it’s a place of peace and unity.

Dani doesn’t realize she’d been avoiding Maja until Maja goes into labor during a meeting of the village's women. When the others double over in pain to mimick Maja's and wail, she emulates them without thinking. When the baby is born she’s in the room, but Dani doesn’t visit with the others or independently for months.

But Dani is no coward. She makes a stew one afternoon, and embroiders a kirtle for the child. Then snowshoes over to Maja’s dwelling.

Alone, the wall lying between them becomes their familiar. It was easy to look right at instead of through it.

“She’s beautiful,” Dani, who forces herself not to look for familiar features or sounds in the small girl's face, says.

“She’ll live a long life,” Maja says.

Dani smiles. "A long life." 

_Only seventy-two years. And you only have fifty-seven years left yourself, Dani,_ a nasty voice in the back of her head reminds her. _You’ll never see this little girl as an old woman._

That nasty voice, when it surfaces from the reverent, empty ring of her happy Harga existence, always sounds like Terri.

Dani pushes away the thought, noticing that Maja has begun to mimic her puckered expression. No one needed to tell her that expression of pain was a communal act in Harga.

A panicked gorge rises in her throat. This is the longest she’s been apart from Pelle since their relationship began.

She makes no excuse for leaving Maja behind. Rushing through the snow, tripping in her furs, going from home to home until she finds him huddled with some other men over a strong brew, Dani's heart beats like a war drum.

Relief colors her cheeks, her eyes snapping and wild when he is within reach. Her arms encircle him from behind and hold him tightly. 

“Don’t go where I can’t see you,” she demands, her hands finding the back pocket of his pants – branding him still, holding him in place. 

He leans into her touch, closing his eyes, a little smile tipping his lips up. If he finds her outburst odd, he says nothing. She hears the women around her make sounds of distress, flying to the sides of the men in their lives, but does not feel or see them, thinking only of Pelle.

Dani thinks about his sunny, open giving nature. When he smiles, everyone around them smiles. When their marriage had been announced, every man in the village had been overwhelmingly overjoyed just as he was that Dani would be his bride.

She beams. The clouds slide over her eyes. Again, the world is just and right again. He is all - everything in the universe. All that stabilizes her. Warmth and joy in the shape of a kind-eyed man.

No matter what, or where she goes, it feels like home to her.


End file.
